Musty smell or damp air coming up through the floors? We cover the dirt under your house wall to wall so less moisture rises into it.
Vapor barrier installation in Longview means laying a ground cover, sometimes called a vapor retarder, over the bare dirt in your crawl space. When it's put in right, it cuts down the moisture coming up from the ground into the space under your floor.
Most folks call because the floors feel cold or damp, the house smells musty, or whoever came to fix the AC crawled out and said the dirt down there is wet. The price mostly follows how big the crawl space is and whether you keep it vented or close it up. The schedule turns on how clear the space is and whether the city wants a permit, which we check before we start. Your estimate spells out which areas and which materials the job covers, and if the floors still feel cold once things dry out, crawl space insulation is a separate step we can talk about.
I come out myself to look under the house and write the estimate, so the person pricing the job has actually seen your crawl space. Our own crew lead and installers do the work, not somebody we found the week before.
I started out doing weekend jobs for neighbors around Longview and made it my full-time work in 2013. Thirteen years later, I still care most about doing things in the right order, because a cover laid over a wet problem just hides it.
We're licensed and fully insured. Crawl space work puts our crew under your floor around pipes, wiring and ductwork, so you should know who's covered before anybody opens the hatch. Call (903) 309-1886 or use the form to get on the schedule for a look.
We reply within one business day, and a lot of the time I'm the one calling you back, then I come out for a free estimate at your property that spells out which areas and which materials the job covers. There's no pressure and no obligation. Satisfaction guaranteed.
The City of Longview handles construction permits, and whether your vapor barrier job needs one is something we find out from the city before work starts. Contractors apply, pay, request inspections and track review status through the city's permit portal, while homeowners pulling a homestead exempt permit for their own house call or visit the Development Services department instead. If a permit is needed, we take care of it as part of our work and tell you up front.
Longview is the Gregg County seat, though a small part of the east side reaches into Harrison County, and we work on both sides of that line. We're based here and work in the cities around it across East Texas, including White Oak, Kilgore, Tyler and more. A lot of the houses we crawl under around here sit on piers, and it's common to find no ground cover at all, or an old sheet torn and bunched up against one wall.
A properly closed crawl space usually controls moisture better than a vented one, as long as it's done right. National research and real-world jobs show closed crawl spaces can give much better moisture control than wall-vented ones in temperate, humid climates. Closing it is a bigger job than a ground cover, because the design also has to dry the air, so we'll walk through both at the estimate.
It can help, but it isn't a full fix. When it's installed well, a ground cover helps reduce soil gases such as radon along with ground moisture, because it puts a layer between the dirt and the air under your floor.
Your house is running too humid if a moisture meter or a humidistat, a small gauge that reads humidity, shows over 60%, which is the line one university extension checklist uses. That checklist says to keep indoor humidity below 60% and suggests a dehumidifier once readings go over it.
A closed crawl space needs a mechanical drying system, usually either a small supply of conditioned air from your heating and cooling system or a dehumidifier. That equipment is part of the plan from the start, on top of the ground cover itself. Which one fits depends on how your system is laid out, and that's easier to judge once we've seen it.
The cost comes down to how big your crawl space is, how much has to be hauled out first, how many piers and pipes the cover has to wrap around, and whether you're keeping it vented or closing it. Closing it costs more because the drying equipment comes with it. You'll get your own figure once I've been under the house.
Have your home's address, whether the crawl space is vented or closed, and any humidity reading you've taken. That lets us check with the right building office and come out knowing what we're looking at. If you can, clear a path to the crawl space door so I don't have to wrestle the Christmas decorations to get under there.
